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Hyeseung Song

Biography

Hyeseung Song

Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American writer and painter. She lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York.

Hyeseung Song

Books by Hyeseung Song

by Hyeseung Song - Memoir, Nonfiction

A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas. With her parents at constant odds, she learns more words in Korean for hatred than for love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. Neither rich nor white, Song does what is necessary to be visible: she internalizes the model minority myth, as well as her beloved mother’s dreams to see her on a secure path. Years of self-erasure take a toll, and Song experiences recurring episodes of depression and mania. A thought repeats: I want to die. I want to die. Song enters a psychiatric hospital where she meets patients with similar struggles. So begins her sweeping journey to heal herself by losing everything.